The Local Government Ocean Recovery Declaration - a mechanism for change

The Ocean is a common good and all people are stakeholders in its health and sustainability, because all people require a healthy marine environment, and we all impact upon it through our consumption, waste and emissions. However, there is a broad perception that ‘ocean positive’ actions available to people are individual choices or behaviours, and are limited by participatory processes which are weak or not well understood.

UK marine environmental management and policy is largely determined by the national Government, with some responsibilities devolved to local government. With many marine environmental campaigns focusing on wider, national issues, such as fishing regulation or marine protected areas, local government is often missed as an important actor in marine policy, particularly for the coastal zone.

However local government has a range of statutory responsibilities that impact the marine environment. Local Councils are also key partners working across public, private and third sectors, whether they are coastal or inland, and many public authorities and partnerships include a democratic element via Councillor representation on their boards. Local Council decisions and actions are relevant and visible to people in the place where they live.

To address this knowledge-action deficit, we identified a gap in local scale political action for the marine environment. We used a UK local government mechanism of the model Motion – this takes the form of a template of background information and Council pledges on a specific issue. 

We developed an Ocean Recovery Declaration (or ‘Motion for the Ocean’) which was informed by PhD research investigating marine citizenship (Buchan, 2021).  It was also supported by findings from the first UK Ocean Literacy Survey.  The Ocean Literacy survey is part of the larger project “Understanding Ocean Literacy and ocean climate-related behaviour change in the UK” delivered in partnership by Defra and the Ocean Conservation Trust and in collaboration with Natural Resources Wales which also included an evidence review of Ocean Literacy and Ocean-Climate related behaviour which was undertaken by Dr Emma McKinley (Cardiff University) and Dr Daryl Burdon (Daryl Burdon Ltd.)

The model Motion also includes national government asks which are informed by marine science (Rees et al., 2020), providing a link between local marine citizenship action, through local government policy, and up to national government. In this way the Motion empowers people to take marine citizenship action to help shape future marine policy.  It is a mechanism for local people to participate in governance by holding local policy to account.  There are currently 30 Motions declared across the UK, with the first EU motions expected imminently.  A community of practice has been formed which supports Councils to adapt the model Motion for their locality.  

This presentation will outline the timeline from first declaration to current activity, as well as an analysis of key themes in Motions from around the UK, wrapping up with how this initiative is being scaled outside of the UK.